Chapter 63: The Wisdom of Age

It was already summer break, but my mood was horrible… I couldn’t get myself to do anything after Enju said those things to me on the day of our end-of-term ceremony. Master also got mad at me while I was feeling like this. 

Well, Master had gotten mad at me since before, though…

But it wasn’t like before. Up until now, Master scolded me because of what I couldn’t do during training. As the person teaching me, that was something normal. But it was different lately. In the first place, he got mad at me because of problems that happened before my training. Master had also seen that my mood was the cause of this. The fact that I couldn’t absorb things or couldn’t focus was because of me myself.

I could understand… I could understand, but I couldn’t do anything about it… I thought I’d calm down a little with time, but that didn’t happen… the same thoughts just circled in my head.

“…-chan. …Sakuya-chan?”

“Huh? Oh… yes… I am sorry, Ms. Ayame.”

I also wasn’t making proper progress with Raihoukai’s summer lessons. Ms. Ayame had been cautioning me a lot lately.

“Let’s take a little break.”

The following parts of the text will be scrambled to prevent theft from aggregators and unauthorized epub making. Please support our translators by reading on secondlifetranslations (dot) com. If you are currently on the site and and you are seeing this, please clear your cache.

“Twb? R yx qkdl.”

R eked’v jdso obyv pbl oyp eskdt. El olal pweeldzu vyjkdt y calyj lhld vbswtb ol byed’v pvyavle yduvbkdt. R vbswtbv vbyv yde pvyavle vs qynl vbl vlmvcssjp, cwv Yp. Guyxl bye pbwv vblx.

“Nlv wp alpv.”

“…ulp.”

Fbl alrlyvle vbyv yde R dseele. R’e sqvld nsxl vs Sykbswjyk’p pwxxla vaykdkdt sd vbkp pwxxla calyj. R oyp tskdt vs vbl qyxkzu hynyvksd vss, ps ol bye qasdv-zsyele xu pnblewzl. R oyp lkvbla tskdt vs vbl Twdeale Oyavb pvuzl vaykdkdt sa pwxxla zlppsdp yzxspv lhlau eyu. Jwv R nswzed’v ycpsac lkvbla sq vblx, obknb zle vs vbkp. R bye nywple vaswczl qsa Yp. Guyxl yde Yypvla Ysxsnbk.

R oyp vbkdjkdt vbyv R bye vs es psxlvbkdt ycswv kv, cwv R eked’v jdso obyv R pbswze es.

“Mbld, zlv wp ts.”

“Twb? Ebyv?”

Ms. Ayame stood, took my hand, and started walking. We exited the Raihoukai building. Where on earth were we going?

“Ms. Ayame?”

“Just follow me.”

“…okay.”

Like what Ms. Ayame said, I walked as she as holding on to my hand. There was a normal residential area slightly far away from Raihoukai, and inside it, a lone house that looked like a shop. At first glance, it looked like a normal house. But it felt like a shop because of the few things lying around.

There wasn’t a signboard or menu outside. However, you could tell it was slightly different than a normal house from the few decorations and things laying outside. Ms. Ayame entered that building.

“Welcome.”

As expected, it was a shop… I had thought that it was some kind of shop because of how it looked on the outside, but it was hard to enter if you didn’t know that. It didn’t look like a house that had just put up decorations. If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t dare enter.

A beautiful lady, who must’ve been of an age but who still looked young, was standing behind the counter. There was a table and counter seats for customers, but no one was there right now. At first glance, I thought it was a coffee shop, but now I wasn’t quite sure what kind of shop it was.

“Sakuya-chan, why don’t you sit at a counter seat?”

“Huh? Yes…”

Any seat was fine for me. A normal young lady might not sit at a counter seat, but I was a commoner in my past life who’d used those seats, so I didn’t really mind.

“Owner, my usual. And… maybe black tea for you, Sakuya-chan? And two of what you’d recommend.”

“Umm…”

Without even letting me look at the menu or discussing with me, Ms. Ayame decided on my order with the woman she’d called “Owner”. Come to think of it, I didn’t bring money.

“Ms. Ayame, I have not brought money…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. This is my treat..”

Well, I could tell that the shop wasn’t that expensive because of it’s atmosphere,  but… even so, Ms. Ayame had no reason to treat me to a coffee shop… as I was troubled, the owner briskly started preparations elsewhere. I couldn’t say “I don’t need this” now.

Ms. Ayame and I didn’t talk as the owner continued preparations,. The owner also silently prepared. She was in her late twenties to thirties. She did feel like a young, pretty older sister, but I thought she had lived quite a while. Taken from my past life, she was at an age where it wouldn’t be strange for her to be a mother.

I had an older brother so my mom was much older, but it wasn’t strange for some of my first-born classmates to have parents around thirty.

…the owner was used to this. You might say that it was obvious because she was doing this as a business, and you’d be right, but she was skilled and her movements were practiced. We were silent for a while as Ms. Ayame and I watched what the owner was doing absentmindedly.

“Here you are.”

“Thank you.”

Black tea was placed in front of me. Ms. Ayame’s looked like coffee. A plate with just three cookies stacked on top of it was pushed in front of the both of us.

“Thank you for the meal.”

“…thank you for the meal.”

Ms. Ayame said that, so I followed her and lifted the teacup up. I tried smelling it, but… Hm? This was a smell I wasn’t used to. I had smelled various kinds of scents, but I couldn’t identify the brand name from just the smell.

Even when I tasted it, it was something that I had no memory of tasting. …no, I remembered this taste from somewhere long ago. Maybe this was…

“…is this instant tea?”

“Yes, it is?”

Oh… I said it out loud. That wasn’t something to say in front of the owner who brewed it, or Ms. Ayame, who was treating me… But Ms. Ayame said it like “Isn’t it obvious?” while drinking her coffee.

I wondered if the cookies were also store-bought and just arranged. I looked at them to check, but the shapes were uneven and it didn’t seem like they were bought at a store. I tried one to test it out.

“Hmm… this is handmade.”

“Yeah, it is. I’m interested in making sweets.”

This time the owner answered. I had sort of understood. Essentially, this shop’s concept was one where the owner made the sweets she was interested in and served those in her coffee shop. That was why the main item wasn’t the drinks, and why the drinks were instant. The owner wanted others to eat the sweets that she made.

“It’s you, Sakuya-chan, so you’ll definitely be thinking something deep, but… This shop is only something the owner does to waste time. There’s no particular meaning or purpose as to why she’s doing it.”

“…huh?”

Wasn’t she doing this because she wanted to sell the sweets that she made? Then, why…

“I do put out handmade sweets, but not always. There are also times when I put out sweets I’d bought from shops.”

Hey… owner… could you say that in front of the customers? Your drinks were instant. If your teatime snacks and sweets were all store-bought, then there was no point in having a meal here…

“Hey, Sakuya-chan. You must be thinking that you don’t understand the point of this store. There’s no clear concept. There’s no purpose. It doesn’t have a speciality. It doesn’t sell anything. I think that you’re thinking about why someone would run this shop.”

“Isn’t that going too far?”

The owner laughed bitterly at Ms. Ayame’s words and cut in.

“But, you know. Customers come here. There’s no one in here now, but sometimes it’s fully packed and I can’t get in.”

Wasn’t that just her neighbours? If a shop opened near others, people living near it would probably frequent it. But that couldn’t be it. There were a lot of shops that went bankrupt because of low sales. Acquaintances and neighbours came in the beginning, but business wasn’t easy enough that you could survive with only those customers.

“Sakuya-chan, you must be thinking about profits, that this store needs to create something of it’s own, or how to increase its sales.”

“*sigh*…”

But that was true. Running a business was the same thing as saying you wanted to earn money. That was why it was normal to think of how to increase sales and profits.

“But no one is thinking about that here. The customers just want to look around or talk with their friends. Earning money is secondary to keeping sales at an acceptable level to the owner.”

“I understand…?”

Well, there were people who started businesses because they were interested. They didn’t do it for sales or to earn money, but instead to make a shop where everyone could gather and have fun. If they were constantly in the red, then that’d be a problem, but as long as their shops could still stay in business, they’d be fine. I could understand those kinds of people and shops.

“You don’t need to think about it too hard. You can just think of it as her doing something because why not. The owner is a housewife and she had free time, so she just thought of starting a shop. It’s fine if she fails. You can just try something without thinking too hard about it.

“…”

I absorbed what Ms. Ayame was saying. Why did she bring me here?

“Lately, only regulars are coming to this shop, and the amount of regulars is decreasing as well. This shop might close down in the end. If you had trouble making ends meet or went into debt, that’d be a problem, but… people can do things this outrageous from just thinking “I kinda want to try something”.”

“Saying going bankrupt or outragous is a little harsh, but…”

The owner laughed bitterly again. But she didn’t seem all that mad.

“I don’t know what you’re worrying about, Sakuya-chan, but… you don’t have to think about it too hard. You can do whatever you want in life, even if it’s impulsive or random. Okay? That’s why you don’t need to overthink it.”

“Yes… thank you.”

I even caused quite a few worries and troubles for Ms. Ayame. What she said earlier wouldn’t make all my worries disappear, but… I understood what she was telling me.

I was overthinking about not making a mistake or acting perfectly. I was searching for meaning too much. But life wasn’t something like that, right? Sometimes we tried things that were stupid even if we knew they were pointless, and sometimes we still challenged things despite knowing that we’d fail.

Not everything needed to have a point, and not everything needed to be absolutely perfect. I had memories of my past life, so I was trying too hard to live cleverly. But my past life was a series of failures and mistakes. I grew and developed with them. That was why, even in this life…

“I’ve done something kinda teacher-like, maybe? Since I haven’t done anything teacher-like for you, Sakuya-chan.”

“That is not true. You have always helped me, Ms. Ayame.”

There were normal cram school lecturers who just thought of their lectures. But Ms. Ayame was really thinking of me. Nowadays, there were more teachers who were lax and even committed crimes… I was extremely thankful for Ms. Ayame.

　　～～～～～～～

“Huh?! The owner’s fourty…”

“Ok~. Stop. Don’t say any more than that.”

The owner stopped me, unsmiling. She just laughed bitterly when Ms. Ayame said all those horrible things, but completely changed when it came to her age. It looked like the topic of her age was taboo. And being in her fourties while looking like that was…

“What are you thinking?”

“Aagh!”

I will not think of it anymore! Please forgive me!

“What do you think? Even a shop where you just sell instant drinks and sweets that an ordinary person enjoys is good, right?”

“That is true…”

I felt that the time I had spent talking with Ms. Ayame and the owner had gone very quickly. The drinks were instant and the food tasted normal, but that was okay. This was a shop where that didn’t matter.

The owner had opened up a lot and started to call me “Sakuya-chan”. Well, the owner didn’t know who I was or where I came from, but… to the people going to Touka Academy, the Kujou name was special, but in a normal town, Kujou was no different than a slightly old-fashioned last name.

“By the way, both of you… it’s already this late, but how long can you stay here?”

“Ohh…”

When the owner had said that, we checked the time… it was already time for today’s lecture to end. Never mind me, Ms. Ayame probably had lessons with her next student.

“L-Let’s go back!”

“That was a wonderful meal.”

Ms. Ayame paid the bill, and the both of us hurriedly headed back to the Raihoukai building.